In excess of 4,000,000 units of platelets (PLTs) are transfused annually in the United States. Currently, there are only 3 quality control measures utilized prior to release of a unit of PLTs: 1) the absence of screened pathogens, 2) visual assessment for swirling and the presence of visual abnormalities suggestive of bacterial contamination (with or without formal bacterial screening), 3) storage history of agitation and temperature control. However, it has been known for decades that the quality of PLTs can vary widely from unit to unit and from donor to donor. Indeed, transfusion of certain units may result in substantial increases in recipient circulating platelets, whereas other units give no discernable benefit. However, the factors that regulate whether PLTs collected from a given donor store well or not is poorly understood. For this reason, currently, there are no quality control measures related to the extent to which a transfused unit of PLTs will survive post-transfusion. This is a medical problem since PLTs that survive poorly post-transfusion result in a less efficacious product from the standpoint of PLT replacement. Collection and transfusing of PLTs is an expensive and time consuming process, and the inability to distinguish which units and/or which donors will not result in an efficacious unit results in a substantial waste of medical resources.
Disclosed herein is a method for assessing a PLT unit (prior to transfusion) allowing the prediction of its post-transfusion survival and also potential toxicity. Specifically, biochemical markers that predict if PLTs will survive well post-transfusion are presented herein.